1. The Case for CrowdStrike Starts with the Network
CrowdStrike is one of the most powerful network-effect companies in the cybersecurity space—and one of the most structurally important technology firms for the decade ahead.
At its core, CrowdStrike is not just a security company. It is an intelligent operating system for detecting, preventing, and responding to cyber threats across the world’s most sensitive enterprise environments.
But what makes CrowdStrike truly exceptional isn’t just its tech—it’s how it has cultivated and scaled a global community of threat-sharing, feedback-generating, innovation-fueling customers and partners. That community isn’t just a sales channel—it’s part of the product development engine. Every endpoint protected, every threat observed, every response tested feeds the system and improves its predictive capabilities.
The Falcon platform is powered by cloud-native AI, but its real moat is data scale and shared intelligence—all built on the back of years of trust and collaboration.
2. A Network Built on Trust, Strengthened by Data
CrowdStrike has amassed:
- Trillions of threat signals
- Real-time telemetry across millions of endpoints
- An AI engine that trains on live attacks in real-world environments
- And, critically, a collaborative ecosystem of security leaders who feed it all back
This forms a network effect so strong that the more customers they onboard, the better protected every other customer becomes.
They are not merely deploying agents; they are wiring a nervous system into enterprise technology stacks.
3. The Macro Forces Amplifying the Thesis
Several forces are converging to make cybersecurity not just essential, but existential:
a.
The Digitisation of Everything
Most industries are still in the early innings of digitisation. In the next 5–10 years, hundreds of millions of devices, systems, and workflows will come online, integrate APIs, and expose new attack surfaces.
b.
The Device Explosion
Each individual may interact with dozens—eventually hundreds—of connected devices. From laptops to wearables to vehicles and IoT sensors—each device is a potential breach point.
c.
The API Era
Enterprises are stitching together SaaS platforms, internal systems, third-party services, and customer apps via millions of API calls per day. Every integration is a potential vulnerability—an invitation to attackers if not properly secured.
d.
Security as Non-Negotiable
In recessionary environments, CFOs may cut marketing or travel budgets—but they don’t cut cybersecurity. Risk mitigation is no longer optional. Insurance companies demand it. Regulators enforce it. Customers expect it.
e.
Threats Are Evolving Faster Than Firewalls
With state-sponsored attacks, ransomware-as-a-service, and zero-day vulnerabilities on the rise, the attack surface is expanding faster than any single company can handle alone—which is why CrowdStrike’s shared intelligence model scales where others falter.
4. The Events of 2024: Real Risk, Real Resilience
The August 2024 event, which triggered a momentary lapse in Microsoft’s cloud security infrastructure and affected many third-party applications including those dependent on CrowdStrike modules, was a moment of global clarity.
It showed us how deeply embedded CrowdStrike is in enterprise infrastructure, and how a single upstream misconfiguration can ripple across the digital world.
But more than that, it revealed CrowdStrike’s maturity, transparency, and speed of remediation. In a time of maximum stress, the company leaned into its customer community—not away from it.
Trust was not lost. It was reinforced.
5. Role in My Portfolio
CrowdStrike is a core position in my G2 and G3 Funds—a future leader with operating leverage, backed by an explosive trendline and an irreplaceable moat. It is:
- Profitable at scale
- Growing rapidly
- Embedded in mission-critical IT systems
And crucially, it continues to invest in platform expansion—moving from endpoint protection into identity, cloud workload security, attack surface management, and SIEM alternatives.
6. What I’m Watching
- Growth in net retention and module adoption per customer
- Expansion of CrowdStrike’s AIdriven Falcon platform
- Customer wins in highly regulated industries
- Competition from Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, SentinelOne, and emerging AI-native players
- The company’s expansion into identity security and external attack surface management (EASM)
7. What Would Break My Thesis
CrowdStrike’s risks aren’t technical—they’re systemic:
- A significant breach or prolonged outage
- A failure to innovate beyond endpoint protection
- Overextension into non-core adjacencies
- Regulatory pressure limiting data sharing models
But to date, the company has executed with strategic clarity, architectural rigor, and cultural coherence.
Final Reflection
In a hyperconnected world, cybersecurity becomes the cost of digital civilisation—and CrowdStrike is building the digital armor at planetary scale.
Its strength doesn’t just lie in technology—it lies in its community, its telemetry network, and its strategic foresight.
If my children ever ask why I bet big on a cybersecurity company in the 2020s, I’ll say:
“Because I believed the internet was only going to get more complex, more dangerous, and more essential—and CrowdStrike wasn’t just defending it, they were rebuilding it with intelligence.”
